0.023% - those are the current odds that a high school football player in this country ever plays in the NFL. Yet, when you look at how kids are using the transfer portal, you would think that number is not 0.023% but 23.0%.

The Transfer Portal facilitates a student athlete's ability to change schools & avoid any penalty (you used to have to sit out a full season to restore eligibility). Now, you can transfer at the end of one season and play the next. It is not uncommon to see kids who are on their 3rd or 4th schools. NIL aside, the transfer portal is great for creating 'parity' in college football but don't think for a second that it comes without a cost.

WHY SHOULD I WORK ON MY GAME & GET BETTER TO 'WIN' MY POSITION WHEN I CAN 'INHERIT' IT ELSEWHERE?

You rarely see kids actually putting in the work to win a job anymore b/c why should they? Receiving something is far easier than earning something. But that's what the transfer portal facilitates - the idea that a kid who 'inherits' everything has any notion or will to work for anything. If you don't like your job after 4 months...leave.

WHAT'S THE HARM IN MORTGAGING MY FUTURE FOR A 0.023% CHANCE AT PLAYING IN THE NFL?

If a kid is on his 3rd or 4th school, my guess is (and I know I'm going out on a limb here) that academics haven't been a priority. So now we have more college football players graduating into the 'real world' with no academic foundation AND no sense of what it takes to 'earn a job'. It is sad and a future we are solely responsible for perpetuating. I am not saying a kid who has been with 4 schools in 5 years isn't academic; I am saying the chances of building the mentality and foundation needed to succeed in this world are likely diluted by a nomadic approach towards such a formative period in life.

BUT NIL NIL NIL.

Yes, I get the NIL money thing. But if anybody saw what happened at UNLV this year, it should be a wakeup call about how NIL works - it is an unstructured and unregulated way to lure kids in with little-to-no legal guarantee on the part of the ppl luring them in. Do you really think these boosters are putting up big $ for NIL if the kid does not perform on the field? For every big NIL deal, there's usually a lot of fine print that makes the deal look far better than the payoff. There is a handful of very select players that will make $millions with NIL - those are also the same exact players that comprise the 0.023% referenced above.

The NCAA is there to protect "student"-athletes. The transfer portal is not protecting anybody except the boosters who fund these programs. It is like Venture Capital - VC firms are willing to 'throw' $1M at 50 startups because they only need one to hit for that "spreading" to create a huge ROI. Well in this case the 49 that don't work out are not defunct startups; they are college 'graduates' in the workforce. Is that good policy?